The best thing to do in this situation is * give the guy a day off to compensate for the time. I would say DON'T give a gift or money. If you do that, the person will continually work late to get gifts and money. Give them a day off, tell them to make sure it doesn't happen again, and as the team lead make sure it doesn't happen again. --- Note that of course 1. None of this should ever happen - obviously 2. Setting aside a crap, disorganized company, any programmer who works late is 20 years out of date. Nowadays, as a rule, any programmer who works "late" is just seen as amateurish, sloppy. "Cowboy" scripts, "hero-slop" programming, and "extreme! hobbyist! enthusiasm!" is not software engineering. There's a reason everything used to crash all the time 20 years ago.